Contributions

THE BUNDLE OF JOY and other Stories from Africa

(African Book Club maiden anthology, Vol 1, 2014)

Other Windows

(Sangam Reader, Vol 4, 2017)

Articles

www.akanbiafeso.com

Introduction

In early 600 AD, almost 700 years after Jesus Christ and perhaps 3000 years after Moses, a lone Arab Bedouin preacher of the Quraysh family of Mecca, emerged from Arabia and announced to the ancient world that he had received a revelation from the almighty God through an Angel Jibril, who his followers say was the same as the Angel Gabriel.

The preacher insisted that by this revelation he had become the seal and the final messenger in a long line of the prophetic tradition of the two great Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity before him.

Soon after, a new religious book, which the preacher and his followers insisted was the final edition of the Jewish and the Christian Holy Books, was announced, with claims that both Holy Books before it had been corrupted.

In the last 1400 years, the debate about the authenticity of these claims among Christians and Muslims has not ceased.

Are these claims correct? Are there any evidences within or outside the Islamic book to support these claims? As some have argued, was Jesus Christ the antithesis of the Islamic prophet? If Islam is peace as we are told by Muslim apologists, why is extreme Islam violent? Was Jesus Christ a Muslim? Is the Bible corrupt? Did Jesus Christ found Christianity? Did he rise from death? Are there secular and scientific evidences to support his resurrection story? How should the Nigerian Christians and Muslims answer these and more questions about their faiths?

For over two years, some of these questions were raised and discussed at various Nigerian media platforms.

Christian faithfuls would find this collection helpful in that there are articles herein that can build their faith and evangelize our Muslim brothers. For Christians who seek scholastic evidence for some of these issues, in this collection, we have a handy material to fall back to...

We know a lot of readers would disagree with some of the contents of some of the articles in this collection, to such, we expect to hear your views.

For the Muslim faithful who is interested in a healthy religious debate and an alternative explanation to the religious narrative he/she is born into, this collection would also come handy...

As an honest seeker of truth, the author has explained that he is willing to debate issues raised here, and all of the opinions in all the articles are entirely his...

Thank you...

Vivlio Team,

Abuja, FCT, Nigeria

A FASCINATION WITH JESUS CHRIST

It is axiomatic today that the most fascinating figure in human history is Jesus Christ. That perhaps explains why every major religion, even those founded before him, account for his existence, draw from his teachings and somehow find a way to include his story in their description of reality.

For example, in the Talmud and The Toledot Yeshu of the Jews, it is acknowledged that Yeshua was a respected miracle working teacher -even though they believe he practiced magic and led the Israelites astray- who had disciples, was crucified -though they deny his resurrection- and that his disciples reported that he rose as he promised.

The Muslims say he was a significant prophet who was born of a virgin. In fact, the legend that when their prophet destroyed the statues in the Ka’abh, Mecca, he left untouched the statue of Mary and the infant Jesus grew from their reverence for him.

The Baha’i faith believes Jesus came from God, was born of a virgin, was a wise teacher who performed miracles, was crucified and resurrected as atonement for humanity.

The Hindus say he was a holy and wise man, a great teacher and a ‘God’ or an ‘Ishtar’

Hinduism’s cousin Buddhism, say he was an enlightened, holy and a wise teacher.

Because this list is inexhaustible, the question naturally arises; why do all these religions think they must account for Jesus somehow? Does this not make him worthy of some type of examination?

Experts and scholars around the world today have been investigating for years and they are unanimously agreed that Jesus did exist, that contrary to claims in some absurd religious and scholastic quarters, he was not married, was a great moral teacher who was arrested, tried and crucified by the most efficient killing machine the world has ever known, the Romans.

Mark’s gospel tells us that leaving nothing to chance, the Roman governor ordered that a lance be plunged into his chest afterwards. John’s gospel tells us that, confirmed dead, his body was released to a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, who placed him in a tomb in which no one had ever been laid.

Apart from his timeless teachings, his unbelievable miracles, there is one more fact mentioned about him reading through the gospels, upon which the Christian religion is built, that struck me recently.

Roughly 3 days after his crucifixion, not only did his body disappear from the tomb, his disciples reported seeing, talking to and eating with him. He had risen as he promised! Saint Paul says it is on this fact that the mystery of the Christian religion lay. Many today argue that this is the same reason why Christianity remains the greatest religion in history, and why according to Christians, Jesus remains the eternal hope of mankind.

Good as all these may sound, some people, atheists, scientists, scholars and members of other religions especially, have disputed these claims.

In fact, there are those, who in an attempt to explain the resurrection away, claim Jesus did not really die on the cross. For example, in the ‘Passover Plot’, H J Schonfeild claimed the sponge offered Jesus on the cross was not soaked in vinegar but was actually soaked in a drug meant to induce the appearance of death, so the Romans can release him, so his disciples can administer treatment later.

The Ahmadiya Muslims still point to a shrine at Srinagar, Kashmir, India today, purported to be where his true tomb is, having been delivered from the cross and immigrated to India where he lived to a ripe old age.

But is it possible for someone who had just survived the harsh torture of the cross, who needed urgent medical attention, to give his disciples the impression he was the risen conqueror of death or travel the long and tortuous distance from Middle East to Asia?

Jesus’ disciples, Apostle Paul, the Romans and even Jesus’ enemies at the time all attested to his empty tomb, and no one in history have either been able to present his body or offer reasonable explanation why his tomb became empty few days after the crucifixion.

Again, had someone invented the resurrection story, he would not have presented women as prime witnesses when women testimony carried no weight in Jewish law and culture.

However, there appears to be a silent witness to Jesus’ resurrection today.

Within the confines of a cathedral in Turin, Italy exist a piece of linen cloth with an image that remains a scientific enigma. For over 100 years researchers all over the world have been working on it. Many believe this same cloth, which is the most probed, examined and studied artifact in all history, is the same that was described in John’s gospel as Jesus burial cloth.

For those who argue that this cloth is a forgery, studies have showed that the forger would have needed to find a life size adult male, torture him mercilessly, crucify him literally and then wrap the cloth around him to successfully forge it. And for others who argue that it could have been the burial cloth of any crucified figure in the first century since the Romans crucified many people, we ask; what created the image that scientist over the years have put fortune and time on the line trying to understand?

Experts say something extra ordinary happened that left the image, proving it was not a burial cloth for just an ordinary man.

For example, how did this cloth come to adopt 3D, holographic image when looked at in a negative, when photography was not invented until almost 1800 years after it? It was as if something happened that left a signature on that simple cloth for future generations to discover, which experts are now trying to comprehend.

Dame Isabel Piczek, a particle Physicist, is someone who has spent most of her time studying this shroud. She explains that, in General Relativity, for those familiar with astronomy, there is something in the surface of Black Holes called Event Horizon, which is so called because at that point, all the laws of physics changes character drastically. She said from her extensive study of the cloth in Turin, she found that what caused the imprint was something completely new to the laws of physics. Looking at the image left on the cloth, she realized that, considering that the cloth was used to tie up and wrapped the body, and yet still had such a perfect image, it must have been tout and rigid and the body must have hovered inside it with no contact at all. This means there was actually no gravity in the tomb in which the body was lain since the corpse was supposed to be resting on top a slab maybe, inside